Mac Pierre-Louis is a Former Assistant Attorney General of Texas, Co-Parenting Mediator and Family Law Educator. Helping parents & children through divorce, child support, custody, modifications, mediation, enforcements, revocations, and court litigation. Call 832-413-4024

Mac Pierre-Louis is a Former Assistant Attorney General of Texas, Co-Parenting Mediator and Family Law Educator. Helping parents & children through divorce, child support, custody, modifications, mediation, enforcements, revocations, and court litigation. Call 832-413-4024

Menu

Basic Texas Child Support Calculations

Video Highlights

The state legislature has decreed what's called “guideline” child support. They've provided a chart that says what portion of a non-custodial parent’s income should be paid to the custodial parent.

The chart is available in chapter 154 of the Texas Family code and listed below on yourchildsupportlawyer.com/calculate. The chart shows that the non-custodial parent is to pay 20% of his adjusted next income to the custodial parent for 1 child, 25% of his net for 2 kids, 30% for 3, 35% for 4, and 40 % for 5 or more kids. If the non-custodial parent has other children that he is either paying support for through a court order or has other kids who live with him, the non-custodial parent gets a discount on the percentage. So, for example if an obligor is to pay 20% of his net for 1 child but has another child living at home with him, then he’ll only pay 17.5% instead of 20. Keep in mind, to qualify for the credit the kids living with the obligor or whom he is supporting by a court order, must actually be his biological or adopted children.

4 steps in calculating support:

First you start off with the obligor’s monthly average gross income.

Second take out the taxes to get his monthly net income.

Third give him his credits to get his adjusted net income, and

Finally multiply his adjusted net income by his percentage, whatever that might be depending on the number of kids he has.

So let's say we have a non-custodial parent with one child, that’s 20%, and he makes an average monthly gross income of $4,000.

We’ll take his $4,000 gross amount and deduct his taxes, which for tax year 2017 is $737.16 each month, this leaves him with a monthly net income of $3,262.84.

Then next, give him his credit for things like the medical insurance he might be providing in order to get his adjusted net income.

Finally you apply his percentage on the chart to his adjusted net. If in our scenario he’s not entitled to any credits, then we simply take 20% of his $3262.84 net for our one child and the amount of monthly child support becomes $652.57.

I know the most complicated part of that calculation process is knowing how much taxes to take out to get the net. Thankfully, the TX Attorney General 2017 tax charts help a lot with that.